[sf-lug] update from computer newbie

[jim stockford]

what a bunch of good answers!

    Yes, I forwarded them all to "bob" aka "jeff" and
am begging/harassing him to join our email list
    http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/sf-lug
just enter your email address then scroll down
and click the Subscribe button--no need for
passwords or anything else.

    I encountered a study of gamblers that claimed
the first and biggest thrill was that of losing, the
main reason they stuck with it.

     I think John and Asheesh and Rick have got
it right, but here are my reasons for my contrary
choices: it's a laptop, likely to be going here and
there, even if not, likely to be off a lot. I like to play
with the stuff. I install absolutely everything and
then die a cruel death working with it all, but hey,
I'm into cruel death. I must be or I wouldn't keep
doing it.
    The idea that maybe mail is needed but needn't
be run in daemon mode is particularly right.
    For you, Bob/Jeff, I'd follow the advice the others
gave--if you don't know you have a need for a
server, don't run it.

    Next-to-last notion: whatever you do, however
you might get hacked, you'll almost certainly
reinstall a bunch of times, so relax and enjoy it,
as Confucius might have said.

    Last notion: when I do on-line stuff with banks
and other institutions with my very personal data,
I boot my computer from a live CD rather than
from the hard drive: nobody can corrupt my CD
(other than sand and grit), so my only vulnerability
is the window of time that the computer is running
from the "live CD". I have no important data on my
hard drives, so the only damage intrusion can
cause is corruption of the filesystems or malevelant
take-over of the machine (e.g. running their own
spam mailer on my box).

    join the mailing list!
    please.